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Use tools not toys

After I finish the next episode of Badassery I'm going to start storyboarding my next animated feature... and I'm NOT going to use an ipad or whatever new toy wannabe filmmakers are flocking too so they can spend more time being pre-occupied configuring toys and NOT making films...

When you play with toys like that you become a TOOL... I say we should use the TOOLS not become them because of these toys... what do I mean? Well whenever you start using tools that are more complex than you need for a given task you start to spend more time and energy messing with the settings and crap then you do actually using it for work... so it becomes a TOY... and you become a tool...

This is what I'll be storyboarding with...
Feel free to use this 2.39:1 template for your own projects!

And a normal pencil... I just make a photoshop action so after I scan each page PShop automatically crops and saves each sell as a separate image film...

That's the problem with becoming a "gearhead" or tech geek... what starts out as curiosity and the pursuit of the ultimate workflow leads you to just becoming a consumer whore zombie that just buys the new version of everything because marketing speak has convinced you that its what you need to be "PRO" or whatever... I say go for the SIMPLEST possible solution that WORKS FOR YOU...

I'm applying the same philosophy to this new features narrative... I'm not over thinking it or making it overly complicated... I'm going to try a straight forward action driven film... the story and theme are very unique as are the characters and settings of course but I'm approaching it as a film instead of magickal art voodoo like I have been ^ ^ I'm not saying I've been doing things wrong up until now I just want to try a different approach and see how it turns out...

I don't want to become a tool to my own process... so I'm interested to see how this simplified approach goes....

(This post was written on an ipad connected to an iphone running linux connected to a rooted android tablet running a SNES emulator connected to 4 touch screens)

Comments

  1. You are so right. I wish I learned this lesson long, long, long time ago.

    I thought Mocap was the way to make my film and get it done. I researched and searched and waited till it came down to a reasonable price. In that time I did nothing.

    Then I got my mocap system. Yay, then waited and waited to get someone to model my characters and then get zbrush where I needed it to be. Still no movie. Boo!

    What happened to me? I mean even when it came to toys, I didn't wait to get a certain toy to start playing with things. I just played and did something.

    In the last year I have stopped playing with toys and have been using what I have.

    This is the best advice cause you can get so caught up in trying to get the latest software and learn it, vs already being done.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like all of the blog posts you have been doing.

    But I miss the YouTube videos you used to make. It was cool watching all of those M dot Film Skool videos. I wish you'd make more of those. You had a lot of presence on YouTube.

    ReplyDelete
  3. @Stormko

    Well I put most all of my film/creative ideas and making of stuff into my "A_BOOK" and "B_BOOK"... and I guess I just don't have the desire or patience to make talking head youtube videos anymore... now I just want to post finished work... Youtube kinda seems like this alien place to me now as well...

    So I'm going to quit my preaching and go further with my own practice... After I kick out another feature and some other things I'm sure I'll go back into film skool mode cause I'll have a learned a ton more by then.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeah, keep up the good work M. I have a question though.

    "I just make a photoshop action so after I scan each page PShop automatically crops and saves each sell as a separate image film..."

    Do you have an action that crops each cell simultaneously??? I have no idea how to do that, but it sounds like it would have been a lot less frustrating to do it that way. I've always had to crop them one by one.

    ReplyDelete
  5. @Ben

    Yeh I'm no action master either ^ ^ yeh all I did was bring in the scanned storyboard page... make sure when you scan them you line them up good you know... then I record an action...and I go through and copy frame 1, make new document, paste it, save it, close it... then go through and do this for all the frames on that page... then stop the action...

    If you have 15 frames it names them 1-15...so when running the action on a page you just have to make sure you took the previous frames out of the output folder so it doesn't overwrite them....

    So yeh you only have to do one page when recording the action... then just open the rest and run it... while remembering to move the outputted images... for renaming things I use this on the mac...

    http://renamer.com/

    There's similar ones on Windows as well...


    Hope that helps!

    ReplyDelete

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